From a photograph made specially for this work.
]
Halévy was a highly gifted man. In addition to his genius for music, he
had innate talent for writing and was an excellent poet and a brilliant
literateur. He was acquainted with German, Italian, English and Latin
and also with Hebrew and Greek. As a composer, though he was a musician
of rare talents, he wrote too much, too rapidly and too carelessly, to
do himself full justice. His two masterpieces are almost immeasurably
above any of his other operas. In these latter, we meet, now and then,
with moments of great beauty, with scenes of thrilling dramatic power,
but they are in the midst of much that is oppressively dull owing to the
rigid obscurity of style in which they are written. He seems to have had
so sensitive a fear of falling into commonplace that he went to the
opposite extreme, even avoiding clearly marked rhythms. His mannerisms
were a persistent resort to the minor key, a fondness for a soft
pianissimo effect on the lower notes, long held, to be regularly and
suddenly opposed by a loud crash of the whole orchestra on the upper
notes; unexpected and violent contrasts in dynamics that are mere
capricious effects without any logical cause; prolixity and
over-deliberately following a sombre strain with one of great
brilliancy, and vice versa. In all his scores, however, his fine genius
is manifested, and it is impossible to study one of them carefully
without becoming impressed by the vigor, the affluence and the
flexibility of his genius. He was equally at home in the gloom of
tragedy and the gaiety of piquant comedy. In scenes of pomp in which the
stage is crowded with characters concerned in some high festivity, he is
peculiarly felicitous. He was a master of passion in its every aspect,
and when he is at his best here, he never sounds a false note. His
characters are always strongly defined, and no composer has left behind
him a more masterly collection of vivid stage portraits than has he. He
was essentially the bard of melancholy, as his many exquisitely tender
and mournful melodies testify. One of the typical characteristics of his
music is its refined distinction. His abhorrence of triviality was so
keen that it caused him often to go too far out of his way to avoid it,
and the result was that he overfrequently fastened on his music a
labored aspect that was fatal to the impression of spontaneity in
effect. When he was less self-conscious, however, his music flows with
delightful ease, lucidity and naturalness. His instrumentation is that
of a thorough master. He had a fine sense of tone-color, and his scores
are rarely overloaded. He was an innovator in the use and treatment of
wind instruments, and anticipated many effects that have been claimed
for those who came after him.
[Illustration:
Fac-simile autograph manuscript by Halévy in possession of the Paris
Opera Library.
]
In “La Juive” the orchestration is, in point of richness, originality
and variety of powerful contrasts, much in advance of anything
previously known in French opera; and his instrumentation of “L’Eclair,”
in its freshness, vivacity and piquancy, was no less innovating, and
notable in a lighter direction. In “La Juive” he had a libretto which is
among the finest that were ever set to music. Its tragic story is told
with immense effect, and the poet’s knowledge of the needs of a composer
is manifested with masterly ability. Halévy never again obtained such a
book. How felicitously it inspired him, is seen in the first act in the
impressive reply of the Cardinal to Eleazar’s contempt for the
Christians; in the romance sung by Leopold to Rachel; in the chorus of
the people at the fountain which runs with wine; in the magnificent
chorus and march which precede the brilliant entrance of the Emperor,
and ending with the stirring Te Deum and the welcome to the Emperor. In
the second act, the Passover scene in Eleazar’s house is full of
interest in its Jewish elements, with which Halévy, himself a Jew, must
have been in complete sympathy. In the same act there are the fiery duet
between Eudoxia and Leopold, and the other duet, equally spirited and
intense in effect, between Rachel and Leopold, both masterpieces in
their way, and speedily followed by the no less splendid dramatic aria
sung by Rachel to her father, and in which she announces her love for
Leopold; the climax of this wonderful act being reached in the thrilling
trio, in which Eleazar pronounces the curse. The next act, with its
brilliant pageantries, falls short of that which precedes it, but has an
immensely dramatic, concerted number which culminates in the anathema by
the Cardinal. The fourth act rises to the level of the second, with its
noble duet between Eleazar and the Cardinal, the tremendous scene of the
Jew in which he savagely defies his Christian foes and welcomes death.
The last act is for the most part declamatory, and has no such numbers
as those we have named, but the impressive dramatic intensity of the
work is maintained to the end.
In “Guido et Ginevra,” he tries to repeat the success of “La Juive,” but
despite several fine flights of genius he failed, not only owing to the
morbidly sad and dull nature of the play, but to the heaviness of the
music. He was more successful with “La Reine de Chypre,” an essentially
spectacular opera, which, by the way, was analyzed by Wagner in one of
his Paris letters (1841). The score is often brilliant and melodious,
and it contains some movingly pathetic melodies, but it is uneven in
excellence, and has pages on pages of music so obscure in meaning and so
dull in effect that its interest is often impaired. Almost the same
criticism may be made on his next grand opera, “Charles VI.” Moreover,
by this time, Meyerbeer’s “Les Huguenots” had been produced, and Halévy,
carried away by the enthusiasm with which that work filled him,
consciously or otherwise, deserted his own marked individuality and
became, to all intents and purposes, a follower of Meyerbeer, at least
in grand opera. In his “Le Val d’Andorre” he became himself again, for
the time being, and produced a lyric drama that fell little short of
perfection in the complete sympathy with which the composer identified
himself with the poet. There Halévy sounded the very depths of
passionate grief, in the music he has given to Rosa after her lover has
been drawn as conscript. In “Les Mousquetaires de la Reine” he produced
a delightful score, sparkling, chivalrous in spirit and full of
beauties. For the rest there is little to be said that would not be in
the way of repetition. His “La Tempesta,” written for Her Majesty’s
Theatre, London, was received there with enthusiastic favor, but
although there are some genuine beauties in the work, especially in the
finely characteristic music given to Caliban, it has nothing in it that
entitles it to live. Halévy was greatly piqued that the one melody most
praised by the artists, and that was hummed by everybody, was Dr. Arne’s
“Where the bee sucks,” which he had retained for Ariel. With all his
fecundity in melody Halévy rarely wrote one that achieved general
popularity. The most noted exception is “Quand de la nuit l’épais nuage”
from “L’Eclair,” a charming air, simple, chaste, and delicious in its
tender grace. He seldom, however, vouchsafed so unaffected a tune, the
harmonies of which are for the most part confined to the tonic and
dominant. The romance “Pendant la fête une inconnue,” from “Guido et
Genevra,” is another morceau, scarcely less naïve and delicate, that
long survived the opera in which it appeared, but it did not make the
tour of the world as did the other. His comic operas abound in
fascinating music which is buried, and must remain so, in the
uninteresting librettos that he so thoughtlessly accepted. In that
dreary book, “Le Drapier,” there is a glorious duet, “Ah! devenez mon
père.” But there is not an opera of his in which some perfect gem is not
to be found. His fecundity in melody is impressively exemplified in the
fairy opera “La Fée aux Roses,” of which the score is affluent in
charming music, sensuously oriental in style, beautiful in local color,
and of striking originality in orchestral treatment. He made an attempt
to revive the enharmonic scale of the Greeks in his “Prométhée
Enchainé,” the translation of which had been made by his brother. It was
a bold adventure, but it failed. It must be confessed that it is
monotonous because of lack of variety in the orchestration, owing to the
almost continuous use of wind instruments to the neglect of the strings.
The recitatives are noble, and the chorus of the Océanides is one of his
most classical and beautiful compositions.
[Illustration: